Moreover, you will leave that place with your hands on your head, for the LORD has rejected those you trust; you will not prosper by their help." Sermons
I. WHY THIS QUESTION AS TO THE SUFFICIENCY OF HUMAN CONFIDENCES IS SO IMPORTANT. The answer is that men cannot do without confidences. The events of a single day of life might be registered in such an aspect as to show what a confiding creature man is. Faith has become so much a habit with him as to be almost a second nature. Hence, even in the great concerns of life, we find many reposing trust with very little inquiry. Looking at others, we find their lives proving the need of confidence by the very frequency of doubt and irresolution in them. They are ever asking the question, yet never quite able to answer it, "What is the best thing for me to do?" And then, as so often happens, the end of hesitation and perplexity is, that they seem to have no choice at all, and go submissively towards the confidence that happens to be most inviting at the moment. Seeing, therefore, that we are compelled to have confidences, it is of the first importance to discover in what sort of confidences prosperity will alone be found. II. MANY ACTUAL CONFIDENCES OF MEN PROVE FAILURES IN THE END. They approach men invitingly, they seem to stand well in the judgment of past generations, they may be the objects of very general approval, and yet, when they are searched into, when the truth concerning them is got from the bottom of the proverbial well, that truth is seen to Be well expressed in the words which say men have not prospered in them. There is, for instance, a very plausible appearance of prosperity in worldly wealth. Many fail to acquire it, and when they acquire it, fail to keep it; but this is held to come in the majority of cases from some fault in the man, and not in the stability of his possessions. To say that a possession is as safe as the Bank of England is to utter the strongest conviction as to its stability and security; and yet such confidences fail because they are not enough for the whole man. It is just one of the perils of wealth that man should let his whole heart rest upon it; should come to let the comforts, occupations, and hopes of life depend upon external possessions. There is failure also when men put confidence in self, confidence in present views of life, present feelings, present vigor of body and mind, in natural qualities, such as shrewdness, self-control, presence of mind, and in habits of attention, industry, and promptitude, that have been cultivated. What manifest failure also often comes from too much confidence in the judgment of man! The counsels of the wisest, most experienced, most successful of men, must be listened to with discretion. III. THE REASON WHY SUCH CONFIDENCES DO NOT BRING PROSPERITY IS MADE PLAIN. They are not confidences after God's own heart. They are an ungodly waste of affections and energies given for higher purposes and more durable occupations. The practical lesson is that we should reject all confidences if we are not made quite certain that God approves them. Blessed is that man who has found his way, it may be through many losses and agonizing pains, to the truth that the unseen is more trustworthy than the seen, the eternal than the temporal. One who has thus risen into the sphere of Divine realities may have his confidences rejected and despised of men. What do these rejections matter? He who has firm hold of God himself need not to care for contemptuous words. The hard words of worldly men cannot destroy spiritual prosperity. - Y.
The Lord hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them. In the state and conduct of Judah we have a picture of the state and conduct of the world, in religious matters, at the present day; and as that nation, by their distrust of God and want of reliance on His power and goodness, wrought for themselves the degradation and the miseries of a long captivity, so those who are seeking for themselves present and eternal peace by any other means than those which God has appointed, and are lulling their souls into security by false confidences, are "heaping up for themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God."I. THE GENERAL MERCY OF GOD IS THE GROUND OF CONFIDENCE WITH MANY, BUT THIS IS A CONFIDENCE WHICH THE LORD HATH REJECTED. The Scriptures are full of declarations which show the utter fallacy of this trust. We may assure ourselves that those who hold to it have ideas of sin very different from those given us in "that sure Word of Prophecy unto which we do well that we take heed." Let us ponder the fact, that if man, as the Scriptures tell us, was formed in the image of God, by every act of transgression we must be effacing that image, and spoiling God's most glorious workmanship; and if God can look upon such a thing with indifference, and allow it to pass with impunity, He must be reckoned as altogether heedless of the grossest interference with His wise purposes which we can possibly, suppose. Now, is such a thing at all countenanced in the Scriptures? No. "God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Evil cannot dwell with Him, nor fools stand in His sight." And so jealous is He of His glory, that in His dealing with the first of our race He annexed the penalty of death to transgression. Adam transgressed, and he died, spiritually and temporally. And where in this is the evidence of a God all mercy? Why did not paradise smile on our first parents as before? Why did the sword of the cherubim keep them out from their first and most beauteous habitation? It was because God is a God of justice, and His veracity stood pledged for the fulfilment of His righteous threatening. And He stands as pledged still with regard to all but those who, being in Christ Jesus, have escaped condemnation. "Upon the wicked He shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest; this shall he the portion of their cup." And hath He said it, and will He not do it; hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good? II. MANY TRUST TO THEIR OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD, BUT THIS ALSO IS A CONFIDENCE WHICH THE LORD HATH REJECTED. Do and live is the motto of the religion of such persons. They purpose to get to life, and their way to it is by keeping the commandments. God, say they, has annexed the promise of future felicity to obedience, and we obey that that felicity may be ours for a reward. Now, this would do very well, did we retain our original standing with God; but whether man be now that holy being he was when God pronounced him to be very good, let the state of the world, let your own hearts witness. The conscience of every man who knows aught of the law of God, and is at all accustomed to compare his conduct and his feelings with its requirements, will testify, that it is as true now as on the day when it was written that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God: But many, who trust to themselves that they are righteous, will endeavour to get rid of these considerations, by saying, that though they have sinned, they have repented: that is, they have felt sorry for their sin, and that God will receive penitence as an atonement. This is trifling with the character of God, and with that righteous government which it is His immutable purpose to maintain throughout the whole of His dominions. Even human legislators have not failed to see how subversive such a principle would be of the good of civil society if put in practice in the world. Would it be right — would it be consistent with good government, that crime should go unpunished, if the criminal, when brought to the bar of justice, should express sorrow for his offence? All know that it would not. And will God fail to vindicate His law, His justice, His veracity because of a few sorrowing tears and sighs? But it is said that Jesus, by His obedience and suffering, has obtained an abatement of the law; that He has softened it down in order to fit it to human infirmity; that it is not a perfect, but a sincere obedience that is required; and that if we fall short in any thing, the merit of Christ comes in to supply the deficiency. 1. We observe that Christ came for no such purpose as to temper the law to our infirm circumstances; for if the law was originally right, if that wisdom which enacted it, and which cannot err, saw it to be fit and necessary, it must be immutably so. What! did Christ die that we should not be obliged to love God and our neighbour, so much as we were originally bound to do? Did He give Himself to procure for us a liberty to sin with impunity? No one in soberness of spirit will say so. 2. But, with regard to the merit of Christ supplying only for the little that we may have fallen short, we observe, that it is altogether at variance with every dictate of Scripture on the subject of the sinner's salvation. Was not the sacrifice of Christ a full satisfaction to Divine justice? Did He not magnify the law, and make it honourable? And can it be necessary that to His infinite satisfaction and merit we should add our obedience, soiled and imperfect as it must be at best, in order to obtain pardon and acceptance with God? What an unhallowed mixing of the clean and unclean; what a confounding of Christ and Belial would be here! Besides, why will men be so perverse as to seek justification by the law, whether it be abated, as it is not, or whether it stands in its original force, as it does to those who are under it, and as a rule of life to all? Why will men be so perverse, when it is said so pointedly, that "by the deeds of the law no living flesh shall be justified"? We apprehend that, to every candid person, the foregoing considerations are sufficient to show how unsafe a foundation, on which to build for eternity, are our own righteousness, and those things connected with it which we have noticed. What, then, is the confidence, by depending on which we may look forward securely to eternity? It is the righteousness of Jesus, made ours by imputation, and received by that faith which is of the operation of God. III. TOO MANY CONTENT THEMSELVES WITH A BARE SPECULATIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUE WAY OF SALVATION AND THIS IS A CONFIDENCE WHICH THE LORD HATH REJECTED. There is a form of godliness without the power. In order to a real saving knowledge of the subject of redemption, we must have a deep impression of the truths which the subject involves: the deep depravity of our nature; our alienation from God; the hatefulness and repugnancy of sin to the Divine nature; our inability to rescue ourselves from perdition; the love, the wisdom, the condescension, all infinitely displayed in the plan and the execution of our redemption, and the readiness and ability of Christ to save. (P. M'Guffie.). People Gad, Jacob, Jeremiah, Kedar, Kittim, KittitesPlaces Assyria, Cyprus, Egypt, Euphrates River, Jerusalem, Kedar, Memphis, Nile River, TahpanhesTopics Confidences, Confidest, Faith, Forth, Goest, Hands, Helped, Indeed, Kicked, Prosper, Prosperity, Rejected, Thence, Truly, Trust, Trustest, Yea, YesOutline 1. God having shown his former kindness, 5. expostulates with the people on their causeless and unexampled revolt 14. They are the causes of their own calamities 18. The sins and idolatries of Judah 35. Her confidence is rejected. Dictionary of Bible Themes Jeremiah 2:36Library Stiff-Necked Idolaters and Pliable Christians'Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but My people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.'--JER. ii. 11. The obstinacy of the adherents of idolatry is in striking contrast with Israel's continual tendency to forsake Jehovah. It reads a scarcely less forcible lesson to many nominal and even to some real Christians. I. That contrast carries with it a disclosure of the respective origins of the two kinds of Religion. The strangeness of the contrasted conduct is … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Forsaking Jehovah Balak's Inquiries Relative to the Service of God, and Balaam's Answer, Briefly Considered. "He is the Rock, his Work is Perfect, for all his Ways are Judgment, a God of Truth, and Without Iniquity, Just and Right is He. That it is not Lawful for the Well Affected Subjects to Concur in Such an Engagement in War, and Associate with the Malignant Party. A Book for Boys and Girls Or, Temporal Things Spritualized. 'The God of the Amen' The Harbinger "All Our Righteousnesses are as Filthy Rags, and we all do Fade as a Leaf, and Our Iniquities, Like the Wind, have Taken us Away. " How Christ is the Way in General, "I am the Way. " All Mankind Guilty; Or, Every Man Knows More than He Practises. A Short and Easy Method of Prayer All are Commanded to Pray --Prayer the Great Means of Salvation What are Consequences of Backsliding in Heart. Backsliding. The Medes and the Second Chaldaean Empire That the Unskilful Venture not to Approach an Office of Authority. "So Then they that are in the Flesh Cannot Please God. " The Section Chap. I. -iii. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners Or, a Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ, to his Poor Servant, John Bunyan "He is the Rock, his Work is Perfect. For all his Ways are Judgment. A God of Truth, and Without Iniquity, Just and Right is He. 1 to Pray Does not Imply that Without Prayer God Would not Give us Anything... John Bunyan on the Terms of Communion and Fellowship of Christians at the Table of the Lord; The River of Egypt, Rhinocorura. The Lake of Sirbon. 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